[Closed] Am I getting old? NFT’s and new money??

It's not for the likes of you, old fella. Not when you can get a princely 0.1% interest on a savings account.

Things are worth what people will pay for them. Some people have more money than they know what to do with. QED.

🤣🤣🤣 I’d probably have more chance of understanding it if I wasn’t so busy with DIY doing up the house!
I’m only 38 🤣

Don’t talk to me about savings accounts. Money’s better off in crypto than the minuscule interest of bank accounts!!

It's basically a new way of trying to create a wider ranging crypto currency, the difference is that bitcoin, etc are fungible, i.e. they all have equal value in the same currency, NFTs are, as the name suggests, non-fungible, so are not all at the same level, so an NFT could be £0.01 or £10 million.

It is getting a lot of press just now, but you get the feeling the market and internet are driving this for quick and easy profits, reality for me is that for profits to be made, losses have to be incurred elsewhere, i just can't see past these things being another pyramid style deal, yes profit is there, but somewhere down the line when the music stops!

I do get a bit depressed with the way the world is going in terms of finance, we had a huge global crash because money was being made out of thin air, is this type of digital currencies any different, instead of debt being graded, we're grading crypto and doing the same.

Just think of NFTs as a pyramid scheme, and you won't be far wrong.

Are you sure a pyramid is really the right shape to dismiss it with?

Thank you I appreciate it, it’s what I was getting the idea of. A bit like the whole Doge movement, buy, let it boom and sell. Then wait for the next thing…

Or just give it a go and learn about a new technology that not that many people understand yet. Figure out how much money you're willing to lose and start buying small lots of crypto on a centralized exchange such as Coinbase to get started. With only a small bag to play with it's better to avoid Etherium based tokens as these have massive fees that can make a small amount essentially worthless. Next step move your crpyo out of centralized exchange to a non custodial wallet and start staking with validators of your choice and earn. Don't stake on the centralized exchanges because they take 100% commission and give you a smaller cut than you'd get with an independent validator. Centralized exchanges also defeat the purpose of decentralized finance. Now is a good time to start as there's a bit of a dip in a lot of coins right now.

He's referring to NFTs rather than crypto as a whole though sirromj.

I've dabbled in crypto over the years, most of the alt coins are effectively a pyramid scheme - see Greater Fool theory - but if you hit one with broader and lasting appeal, you could be holding something worth having in the future.

I'm not sure NFTs are understandable without understanding crypto.

Now is a might not be a good time to start as there’s a bit of a dip plummet in a lot of coins right now.

FTFMS. It's got a few people scared!

I listened in on a live chat on NFT’s which was joined by Idris Elba of all people, and I’m still none the wiser how it all works?

You can own NFT art but creating it is not for average Joe to do?

I have some bitcoins invested at the less known end of the market but I’m doing that through Revolut so no idea about digital wallets etc.

Perhaps I’m doing this all wrong.

Good explanation here and a practical use of NFT to provide provenace for luxury items.
Also makes a good case for holding stablecoins.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-u_OAayO5Io

The idea has validity but the current situation is a bubble. Ride the wave if your brave or whatch it pop and see what arrises from the ashes which will be more interesting.

NFTs 😂😂😂. A worse scam than crypto. You’d be better holding on to your fiat currency and watch its value steadily decline with inflation. Or just put it in a pension pot and watch the effects of tax relief and compound interest at work.

Folks’ reports of what they’ve gained remind me of gamblers’ reports of winnings. Lots of good news. Surprisingly little bad news.

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/behind-the-bastards/id1373812661?i=1000544197870

The Future is not only Useless, it's Expensive

I have a suspicion that these things are all the result of central banks printing free money since 2008 and crazy low interest rates. If that ever changes they will rapidly become worthless. But I could be wrong.

I struggle to get my head around all this but my 13 year old son has amassed a tidy sum from Crypto and now NFT’s. I just wish now I’d allowed him to do this 2 years ago when he first showed an interest!

Are you sure a pyramid is really the right shape to dismiss it with?

Absolutely. There's an imperative  for a commodity that is endlessly renewable, but the commodity itself is useless, and doesn't matter.  It won't collapse like a trad ponzi scheme in the way that say Madoff's did, but it is absolutely a grift to take money from people.

An NFT is just a unique electronic item, as I understand it. So in the same way that an original Van Gough is worth a lot more than a print, now the original picture of some meme is worth a lot more than copies of it. This wasn't possible before as all copies were identical.

Bitcoin is different, it's a currency with a finite number of units, and it's harder and harder to get more. If this isn't a blatant pyramid scheme I don't know what is. Early adopters were bound to get rich, driving demand for smaller and smaller amounts to be worth having. And while the value goes up it becomes economically viable to throw more and more physical resources at extracting it (electricity in this case) which means it will just keep consuming physical resources for later adopters to stay still whilst the early ones get even richer.

It is already a major generator of emissions, and it produces nothing.

Can’t beat a bit of greed to separate punters from their money.

There’s a whole infrastructure business also trading on the back of this stuff as well as well ,it’s the same old game but reimagined for a new generation.

Just gambling with a useless commodity.(you could get lucky or not)

The wolf of wall st must be gutted that this stuff wasn’t around earlier, he’d have made a bigger killing 🙂

I suppose with an nft you could treat it as private plate for your online digital avatar , so when banksy puts a few out could get very interesting.

I actually like Andy Warhol stuff as it was a clever idea screeen printing pictures as you could sell loads at a reasonably lower entry than a one off.

When the music stops, a lot of people will be left with worthless NFTs that they paid a lot of money for.

Loads of people will have made a tidy profit playing the tune though.

As @molgrips said, NFTs are just transfer of ownership of original digital material to a new owner. the original material is essentially copywritten by the creator at inception and affords them the chance to sell it later. In this way it's no different to artists with paintings/songs. The new NFT owner doesn't own the copywrite (unless specified in the sale of the NFT) just the item and thus has no immediate rights of display or reproduction.

It's no different to art, it's just virtual/digital. The skill is in knowing what will become valuable in the future, just like art.

Emperor's new clothes.
There probably are some legitimate and justifiable uses for NFTs but most of it is hype around an idea that people don't really understand and are hoping to make a quick buck on or are scared of missing out - meanwhile there are masses of energy spent on keeping blockchains running. You might as well be investing in coal.

Forget NFTs, new money will soon be piling into tulips. Get in there early is what I say.

So in the same way that an original Van Gough is worth a lot more than a print, now the original picture of some meme is worth a lot more than copies of it.

I think if you only believe NFTs are useful for trading memes, you'll probably not see the value.

Imagine a world where everything that you own as a digital product can now, potentially, be resold. Digital things become finite - you can't simply copy them. In that respect, ownership in the digital realm becomes just as real as owning a physical book. You can sell on those digitally-downloaded games / books / films / documents. It can be structured in such a way that the original creator continues to get a share when this happens, too. This is hugely beneficial for content creators, of course, but also for consumers whose digital items now have value.

There's also a whole rabbit hole of how other industries could move wholesale to blockchain/NFT tech. The stock market, with NFT shares for example, could be democratised with blockchain transactions being visible to everyone. Obviously there are a lot of people with interests on both sides of that fence.

Should you 'invest' in meme NFTs? Probably not, unless you understand the meme culture / value proposition extremely well. Should you be aware that this industry may reshape our world over the next decade? Definitely. I'd love to invest in NFT infrastructure stuff, I think it's got potential to be huge. I don't really know enough about the industry to get started, though.

Daffy
Full Member
As @molgrips said, NFTs are just transfer of ownership of original digital material to a new owner. the original material is essentially copywritten by the creator at inception and affords them the chance to sell it later. In this way it’s no different to artists with paintings/songs. The new NFT owner doesn’t own the copywrite (unless specified in the sale of the NFT) just the item and thus has no immediate rights of display or reproduction.

It’s no different to art, it’s just virtual/digital. The skill is in knowing what will become valuable in the future, just like art.

Except a lot of it doesn't have copyright, or any rights to reproduction, so effectively you own the 'original', which has a value in relation to NFTs, as long as the market and structure stay the same, your NFT can gain or lose value, but most of them won't be earning you anything in the mean time, like a real painting that is reproduced or used for other means.

I think if you only believe NFTs are useful for trading memes, you’ll probably not see the value.

Indeed and everything you say follows on from the fundamental concept. I just gave an example based on a traditional example.

But also as said copyright is different. The original hand written paper version of a Beatles song would be like an NFT in the modern world, but whoever buys that paper version doesn't own the copyright, the record company does. And in the case of say, the disaster girl meme, I don't think anyone owns the copyright. But someone now owns the original NFT. Although I dunno how anyone can claim a particular file is the original of that.

NFT is just a technology, if people want to pay through the nose for something unique like a meme photo, a painting or a Beanie Boo that's up to them.

Forget NFTs, new money will soon be piling into tulips. Get in there early is what I say.

Oh, very good 🙂

Can’t beat a bit of greed to separate punters from their money.

Very much this. I see lots of people saying they only chuck £x amount a month in bitcoin which is the equivalent of beer money so can afford to lose it all. Thing is there are literally millions of people doing this around the world so the whole thing becomes a rolling ball of s***

Ivanka Trump will sell you an NFT and you get a free hat and an actual painted picture.

https://melaniatrump.com/head-of-state

CAUTION: She's from a family of grifters.

The original hand written paper version of a Beatles song would be like an NFT in the modern world, but whoever buys that paper version doesn’t own the copyright, the record company does.

True, but there's no reason that the copyright to a recording and the paper copy can't be sold together / as a unit.

E.g. That Wu-Tang Clan album that was sold for private use only. Now there's an NFT that is part of it. So absolutely an NFT owner could own the copyright (or at least the distribution rights, if that's different).

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/wu-tang-nft-album-once-upon-time-shaolin-1244859/

NFTs are like the beanie baby market in the 90s. Except you don't get the actual beanie baby, you just get the receipt proving you paid for it. All whilst consuming the power of a medium size country - neat!

The Blockchain is like a regular database, with much lauded benefits that never seem to materialise.

Crypto is a massive rug pull, sure lots of people made money, lots of people lost money, and when it crashes it's going to be a disaster. It does nothing better than fiat. I'm looking forward to the day that tether gets audited and to no one's surprise they don't have the cash they claim to.

All this stuff is just Herbalife for tech bros - the reason they love talking about it is they need more people on board to keep propping it up.

So absolutely an NFT owner could own the copyright (or at least the distribution rights, if that’s different).

The whole point of that album is there aren't going to be distribution rights - it's a conceptual art piece that specifically prohibits being used in the way a traditional album would be used, if that changes it ceases to be what it is. So how does that work?

Crypto is a massive rug pull

There's nothing essentially wrong with crypto as a self-regulating decentralised FIAT currency as it was originally conceived. In fact it has a number of useful functions, but the need to trade in their "value" instead of cypto having any usefulness in of itself is a million miles from how it was envisioned, That all the people profiteering from their value have to be regulated by most countries financial regulator, and that the implied payment for mining is clearly not happening in some cases  kinda makes the whole thing at the very least scam adjacent, if not an actual grift, which it clearly is in some cases.

I’m looking forward to the day that tether gets audited and to no one’s surprise they don’t have the cash they claim to.

Although not audited I thought it had been proved that tether was not actually tethered? They were using some sort of creative accounting?

I could write a thousand words on the subject, but it doesn't need that many.

In my opinion, it's just the latest digital alchemy, Crypto 'created' $2.6tn worth of 'money' from nothing over the last 15 years or so, NFTs have created $16bn in about 12 months.

Could the NFT market collapse? Certainly, I think it probably will at some point, someone mentioned Tulip bulbs? Yep, it's a goldrush.

Could the collapse in the NFT market cause the Crypto market to collapse? Yep. Nothing lasts forever and $2.6tn worth Crypto could start looking like a warehouse full of rotting tulip bulbs pretty quickly.

I think the main thing though is that there's always going to be the next bubble and the next crash, the next recession. You can risk it and get involved, if you're lucky (it's more luck than judgement) you'll make some money and get out before it bursts, or you can ignore it. Either way, your financial future will be affected by it and your decision as an induvial to buy/sell NFTs or not will make no difference to the market, we're all just too small.

NFTs are like the beanie baby market in the 90s. Except you don’t get the actual beanie baby, you just get the receipt proving you paid for it. All whilst consuming the power of a medium size country – neat!

I don't think NFTs consume power, do they? Bitcoin mining does.

There’s nothing essentially wrong with crypto as a self-regulating decentralised FIAT currency as it was originally conceived.

No? I can't see how the limited supply allows for growing economy without massively increasing the value of the early versions of it. It'd be like having gold as your currency when gold mining output decreases at a steady rate and no new deposits will ever be discovered. As supply of bitcoin goes down all that happens is that the value goes up, which means that the people who got in early get richer and richer, as long as there's something to convert their bitcoin into. But there is a real cost of mining more, this is getting harder and is consuming real resources (energy, hardware, manufacturing) and that is going to increase. It's already problematic, and it's going to get worse. People will be working in factories to produce hardware and wind turbines to power it just to make investors rich INSTEAD of doing actual productive work.

I can't see how this is better than normal currencies. We can make more £ by simply decreeing it, but those who have the power to do that have a vested interest in not doing it, so it self regulates (ideally). There's nothing regulating bitcoin. Free market principles will maintain the profitability of putting more and more effort and resources into mining.

I'd really appreciate one bit of help understanding how NFTs are created. How is scarcity ensured? If someone made an NFT of a meme picture, what is stopping me from changing one pixel of that picture and using it to create my own NFT (which I could try to sell).

I get how bitcoins could have a stable value since supply is limited, but surely there is no upper limit on the number of NFTs that could exist?

(I'm sure I have fundamentally missed a key point somewhere but have never found an explanation!)

If someone made an NFT of a meme picture, what is stopping me from changing one pixel of that picture and using it to create my own NFT

AIUI you could, but the owner of the original NFT could say 'hey that's not the real one, mine is' and they could prove theirs was real rendering yours worthless. Which is what happens with traditional art only it's harder to spot a fake.

there will be some useful reason for nft's at some point, but it does feel a shame that their selling point is digital scarcity. Its the biggest benefit of being digital is the ability to make "infinite" copies. Does feel like a step back not forward.

I’d really appreciate one bit of help understanding how NFTs are created. How is scarcity ensured? If someone made an NFT of a meme picture, what is stopping me from changing one pixel of that picture and using it to create my own NFT (which I could try to sell).

In practical terms they're created by 'minting' them. You take your unique 'art' there are a few services that will allow you to do so and you pay them a few hundred dollars (in crypto of course) to 'mint' it (make it a unique code) and then put it up for sale.

There's not much stopping you taking an existing image and changing it slightly (although I suppose the original artist could claim ownership of your NFT later, but really, that's not the point. Your NFT's value isn't based on it's artistic merit, not really anyway (despite what some may claim) it's not worth anything because you're not well known enough to make it special or unique (Social Media and economic alchemy crashing together there).

Lots of people with a 'presence' are trying to sell NFTs at the moment, Jake and Logan Paul (one of which thinks he can beat Mike Tyson Boxing) and the likes of Paris Hilton etc, but values have crashed.

It really is as shady and stupid as it sounds.

You can own NFT art but creating it is not for average Joe to do?

Anyone can. AIUI you buy a bit of a coin (generally etherium), create your masterpiece, link one to the other on the blockchain and voilla you have your NFT. You can now sell your NFT for $0.000001 because you're not a famous artist and no one cares for your NFT.

I don’t think NFTs consume power, do they? Bitcoin mining does.

Yep, it's just like any other transaction using this "technology".

Buying a packet of chewing gum in El Salvador now uses 1900kWh of electricity.

Or the same as 1,500,000 visa transactions.

Or a 2 bedroom flat for a a year.

Just think about that, every time someone says they made a profit selling bitcoin, they used the same energy as a a household uses domestically in a year.......

it’s not worth anything because you’re not well known enough to make it special or unique

So no different to art then.